Author: Millionaire

As I’ve mentioned many times, Reading and continuing education are very important to me.

I went through a little drought where I wasn’t having much luck finding good books to read/listen to. This is pitiful in the scheme of things, because there are millions of books out there, but I grabbed a few duds and that slowed me down a bit.

I can’t say that the 10x rule ever came up on my top 10 list, but Audible was running a special with a bunch of buy-one-get-one books, and Grant Cardone’s 10x rule made the cut.

I had already read “If your not first your last”, so I was familiar with Grant Cardone. I’m not a salesman, and he is a Sales training guy, so that set me back at first, but I decided to give it a shot. After all, the “only difference between success and failure is the 10x rule!” yeah!

The book set me back initially because I knew it was a typically over-hyped semi-sales pitch to build the brand of Grant Cardone himself. Some books are awfully aggressive, ego-boosting the author the entire time. While Grant uses personal examples in the book, I won’t quite say it was a rolling advertisement. I didn’t feel offended or over-sold to.

This book is one of those books that I don’t think I “Learned” anything from. I don’t want to suggest there wasn’t valuable ideas, but there wasn’t anything “new” or “Novel”. Thats OK though, because the book was very much a pep rally, jazzing you up about doing stuff.

This is, in many circumstances, invaluable. From my experience, the reason 99% of people fail is because they don’t get off their rear end and DO SOMETHING. The 10x rule premise is precisely that- anything worth doing is 10x bigger and takes 10x longer to see success. It reminds you that its essential that you get busy being productive, and that you stop using the excuses of those around you why you shouldn’t. This is, while not novel, a very important lesson that I feel is grossly under-recognized. I give Grant some serious credit for knocking that into your head over and over again to the point that reading the book for 15 minutes makes you want to put the book down so you can go make things happen. I don’t think its possible to read the book and not increase your productivity simply because of its ability to get you excited about it.

I truly respect and appreciate Grant’s argument that being all you can be is actually a duty, and that being lazy is bad for you, your family, and our society. I firmly agree. Just imagine how great it would be if everyone took Grant’s advice!

Grant walks you through taking the “fourth degree” of action, which is MASSIVE action. No one sees tremendous success by doing what everyone else is doing, you have to do massive action- more than anyone else is willing to do. Grant also talks about the idea that time management is a myth, and while I used to look for the elusive “Time management”, I have come to the conclusion that Grant Cardone’s perspective is indeed correct. So stop behaving like everyone else and go be successful already!

In a nutshell, I can’t say that this was a revolutionary book. I don’t know if I’d run out and recommend it, unless you need to get off your rear end and make things happen. For everyone else its positive reinforcement on what you already know. Sure, if you are looking for a book to read its a fine option. I would never turn someone away from it, but its not going to be making my top 25 list anytime soon!

I’ve always been a huge advocate about education and always learning everything you can about the topic. So after Brian Urlage @Source1Auto pitched to me Gary Vaynerchuk’s event in Florida coming up, I decided I should probably finally get around to reading “Crush It”. It made it onto this week’s to do list, and I wrapped it up.

I’m honestly torn on whether or not I want to recommend the book, so I’m giving it the “OK” designation. Gary does self-promote, but not as offensively as many of his counterparts. He offers genuine thoughts and perspectives, but the entire book wraps up to what you probably already know.

It may seem small, but one thing I get stuck on is his reference to eventually succeeding enough to make 50k/year. I have to anticipate he’s trying to tone down crazy expectations some people have of being overnight millionaires. I love his quote that the only place that happens is the lottery. On the same note, it’s a lot of work for just 50 grand a year… so it better be your core passion. As long as you truly live it and breathe it, its free money, right?

I can summarize the book in a few phrases for those who haven’t read it:

1. Work your rear end off. Work every day, all the time, and live your brand/site/product
2. Be patient. You may not be successful in 2 years or 5 years, but stick to it.
3. Having great content is important, which is pretty much the marketing concept of “Product”. Be the expert in whatever you are passionate about
4. Great content needs to be everywhere, which is essentially the marketing concept of “Placement”
5. Having great content isn’t enough, and you need to spent most of your time engaging others, which is essentially “promotion”
6. Be authentic, and true to you. It’s the only way to maintain passion and come off as real to your users.

I firmly doubt the effectiveness of personal branding quite to the effect suggested in the book. Trust me, I think personal branding is important- I’ve hired professional designers to make my custom web page and I am all about building a brand, but the concept that resumes are useless and your followers will offer you a job when you lose yours? Not so much. If you have enough followers to do that, then odds are you have enough followers that you don’t need to work at all!

It is a great book to get jazzed up about. He’s pretty motivational from that regard. I would never suggest people avoid the book, but take it with a grain of salt. Branding is a piece of the puzzle, but its not the whole story, and thinking that a personal brand is all you need in life works for very few people.

On the contrary, it compliments products and services quite well!

Gary Vaynerchuck’s “Crush It” is available on amazon here: